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Frank DiGiacomo: Join Obama, or Die?

On my way to work yesterday, I passed a phone booth advertisement that briefly stopped me short. The center of the placard depicted a reproduction of that famous 1754 political cartoon that has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin of a snake cut into eight segments, each labeled with the initials of one of the British colonies that existed at the time. Beneath the sliced-and-diced serpent were the words "Join, or Die." The ad I saw had one more addition to it: at the bottom of the poster was a photograph of Barack Obama.In a hurry, I didn't stop to check the image for any small print that might reveal whether the ad was actually a campaign poster put up by Obama's team in advance of the Feb. 5 New York primary, or whether it was some sort of Swift Boat–style strategy to trip him up. But my initial reaction was that if it was an example of the former, it was a really dumb move. For its time, "Join, or Die" was a brilliant political statement—and, I suspect, not an exaggeration—but, heard today, after almost two terms of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it sounds like another one of the current administration's you're-either-with-us-or-against-us ultimatums—and not the kind of change that Obama has been promising in his campaign speeches.

This morning, I stopped at the phone booth to give the ad a real going-over, but it was not the poster I remembered from the day before. Yes, it still read "Join or Die," but there was no picture of Obama to be found. Instead, at the bottom of the placard was a teaser for John Adams, the Tom Hanks–produced HBO miniseries about the second president of the United States and the birth of our nation. As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!" I've contacted HBO in the hopes that someone there can explain what I know I saw yesterday. Unless I was having a weird reaction to the energy booster in my Jamba Juice, I think there are two possible explanations: Either some enterprising Obama booster managed to slide a photograph of the candidate over the John Adams blurb, thereby creating some kind of guerilla campaign poster, or this was one of those time-release ad campaigns whereby phase one featured posters that did depict Obama (and probably other candidates as well) that were subsequently replaced with the poster that I saw today.

If HBO's answer is interesting, or if I find that I have an entertaining amount of egg on my face, I'll update this post. But I still think that "Join, or Die" doesn't work as a campaign slogan today. Unless, maybe, you're Rudy Giuliani.

Update, 4:45 p.m.: I've just heard from HBO vice president of corporate affairs Jeff Cusson, who informs me that Barack Obama is not depicted on any of the promotional posters for the pay-cable network's forthcoming John Adams miniseries. Cusson writes that he has "no idea" how an image of the candidate might have gotten temporarily paired with the teaser ad, but, like me, guesses that it was a case of someone manually inserting a photo into the phone-booth frame that holds the poster. Stealth advertising lives.